A school district board in upstate New York is investigating school officials amid accusations that the district may have confined elementary school students inside wooden “timeout” boxes.
Images of the boxes, which resemble tiny padded cells, first spread on social media last week, after a former member of the Salmon River school district school board accused officials of building them to seclude children with disabilities. The images unleashed an immediate uproar in the small district, which teaches about 1,300 children and lies on the border between New York state and Canada.
In addition to investigating the officials, the Salmon River central school district board of education announced last Thursday it had placed three officials, including an elementary school teacher, on leave. It also reassigned the district’s superintendent to “home duties” and is cooperating with a New York state department of education investigation.
While the district superintendent acknowledged that the district had set up three of the wooden crates at two elementary schools, he also said that the district had removed the boxes and that no student had ever been confined inside them. However, at an emotional and tense community meeting last week, multiple parents said they suspected their children had been inside the boxes, the Albany-based Times Union reported.
One parent of a minimally verbal child said his son told him: “If you are happy or if you are sad, this is the place you have to go to calm down.”
More than 60% of Salmon River students are Native American. For several community members, the controversy over the boxes evoked memories of abusive residential schools, the US government’s boarding school system that sought to force Native American students to assimilate to white society. Nearly 1,000 students died at those schools, which operated as recently as the 1960s.
“Sixteen of my family members, at least, have gone to residential schools; it’s not generations removed,” Sarah Konwahahawi Herne, whose first-grader attends a school where a box was placed, told the Times Union. “This is not history. This is contemporary times in our family.”
Kathy Hochul, New York’s Democratic governor, has called the allegations “highly disturbing”.
“School should be a place where every child is safe, respected and supported,” Hochul said in a statement on Saturday. “These allegations are alarming and entirely unacceptable and the state’s independent education department must take swift action to investigate and rectify this situation.”
The district’s superintendent office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. However, in a statement, the school board apologized profusely.
“We recognize the pain, concern, and distress these events have caused, and we are truly sorry for the harm and trauma this has resulted for our community,” said Jason Brockway, the board’s president. “We want to be clear: the circumstances surrounding these allegations do not reflect the values and standards of care that guide this district.”
